


Beautiful Earth

by PawPunk



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Child Abuse, Gen, Graffiti, Magic, general weirdness, nature witch stress, prompt: talking pig, street art, written for the banned together bingo event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:02:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25377358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PawPunk/pseuds/PawPunk
Summary: Stress was made for the woods, the fields, the open nature. If she must live in the city, she will make it green herself.Written for the Banned Together Bingo event. Prompt: Talking PigsAlso written for Redcursive's title swap event. This is my second fic, the title was supplied to me.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Beautiful Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redcursive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcursive/gifts).



> Trigger warnings: minor injuries, child abuse and neglect, darker vibes than I usually write

They called her a monster or a little freak more than they called her by her real name. Eventually, Stress accepted it. She didn’t mind being a monster. Monsters were more interesting than people anyway, she thought as she stomped through the woods. Sticks cracked under her green froggy rain boots as mud splattered on the hem of her skirt. Monsters didn’t have to act like young ladies.

Stress stumbled down the steep hill, to the bottom of the dried out stream bed. The sunlight filtered through the branches, not bright enough to sting her eyes, sore from crying. The claustrophobic density of the undergrowth felt cozier, more comfortable than the open roads and dried out yards of Stress’s hometown. She flipped over a sun-bleached rock and a centipede scuttled away.

“Cool,” Stress whispered.

“Little girl.” Stress jumped up at the booming voice. She looked up, then down as she realized there wasn’t a grownup there. Instead, there was a piggy- a BIG piggy. His glittery black eyes were level with her own, and he was covered with dense brown fur. Two yellowed tusks poked out of his snout, but Stress wasn’t afraid. Somehow she knew he wouldn’t hurt her.

“Hello,” she said.

“You came here to hide from something,” the piggy said. “What is it?”

“I’m not hiding,” Stress protested. “I’m just exploring.”

“Very well,” the piggy said. “You may lie to me if you wish.” He started to trot away.

“I’m not lying!” Stress yelled. She followed the piggy, crashing through bushes and rotting logs. The vegetation got thicker, but no thorns scraped Stress’s legs. No poison ivy brushed her skin. “Hey! I’m not lying!”

The piggy didn’t respond. He kept up the same pace, barely slow enough for Stress to keep up. Despite the cool day, sweat dripped down her face. She grabbed a tree branch and climbed up the edge of the stream bed, panting as she realized that the piggy had stopped.

“If you wish to explore,” he said, “You may find more success here.” Stress looked up. The piggy had led her to a small clearing. A plum tree grew in the center, next to a small but deep pond. Stress trotted over, lying by the bank and dipping her hand in. Small fish and tadpoles swarmed around her hand, bumping into her. They felt soft and slimy, like tapioca pudding.

The piggy lay down beside her, drinking deeply from the pond. “I was hiding,” Stress admitted.

“I figured.” The piggy didn’t ask anything more. Stress continued anyway.

“Ma and Da think I’m a little freak,” she said. “They don’t say it, but I know they think it. They tell me to sit still and be quiet and act normal, but I keep telling them that I can’t and they don’t listen! And they won’t let me eat anything except the weird food that they cook even though it hurts to eat it and they never even talk to me unless its to yell at me.” She picked a handful of pondweeds.

“Hmm,” said the piggy wisely. “So they are not a species that cares for their young?”

“They’re supposed to be,” Stress said. The tears of a while ago threatened to return. “They’re not doing a very good job, though.”

“How old are you?”

“Eight years.”

The piggy snuffled. “When does your species reach maturity?”

“Eighteen years.”

“That’s unfortunate.” The piggy stood up. “Perhaps… I could convince them to be more kind to you.”

“You think you could talk some sense into them?”

“In a way. If you’ll lead me to your den?”

Stress stood up, brushing off her skirt and drying her hands. “Follow me.” Although she hadn’t paid attention to her path through the woods, Stress found her way back easily, almost instinctually. By the time she climbed out of the stream bed and spotted her parents’ home through the trees, the sun was already setting.

“Where are you, you little monster?” her mother was calling vaguely into the woods. “I know you’re in there! Don’t think I won’t make you eat your dinner cold!”

“I’m here!” Stress yelled. She stumbled out of the woods, and her mother’s snarl deepened.

“Stress, what the hell happened to your dress?” she said.

“… It got muddy,” Stress said. She hid her dusty hands behind her back. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You’d better be! I hope you’re happy, ruining- WHAT IS THAT?”

Stress turned around as the piggy trotted out of the woods. “He’s my friend.”

“G-d dammit Stress, that’s a wild boar!” Her mother grabbed her painfully by the wrist and yanked her inside the house. The screen door slammed, rattling in its frame. Stress’s piggy friend oinked indignantly.

They moved away 6 months later, to the city their old house had been on the outskirts of. It wasn’t a place that was popular to move to, mostly because there were hardly any parks, hardly any gardens. There weren’t even trees or bushes planted along the sides of the road, just perfectly selected flowers that came from Africa and South America and couldn’t reproduce.

Of course, the lack of any kind of native flora was part of the appeal to Stress’s Ma and Da.

Stress wasn’t so easily defeated, though. For eight more years, she cherished the dandelions that grew through cracks in the pavement, the moss and vines that grew on the older buildings, the lichens that coated the concrete bridges over noisy highways. She made friends too, and the way Cleo spoke softly to spiders as she released them outside or stray cats sprinted to leap into Scar’s lap as he passed them on the street told her she wasn’t the only one who had been shepherded off away from nature to make her normal. It also told her it wouldn’t work.

Still, the longing for something green- anything green- lingered in her bones, her body feeling almost stretched to the sky in a search for something natural. Maybe that was why she found herself standing in an abandoned, pitch-black courtyard, holding a bag of spray paint cans.

Stress flicked on her flashlight. She rolled up the sleeves of the black jacket she had thrown over her pink top, selecting the first can and shaking it. She winced at the rattle, glancing around the darkened square. The eerie glassless windows peered down at her, the concrete walls blocking out even the moon. Only the light of streetlights reflected off thin clouds joined her in the courtyard. Taking a deep breath, Stress extended her arm and painted the first stripe on the wall.

Stress only had a vague idea of what she wanted to paint. As she blocked out the first large, white shape, she couldn’t help but feel a little stupid. She wasn’t the kind of girl who vandalized things. She was better left to drawing on her notes and getting reprimanded when the flowers and vines covered the words. Nevertheless, she filled in the shape, adding black details.

The uneasiness went away the moment she picked up a can of green paint and put down the first line. She knew what she wanted- needed- to paint here. The organic lines flowed across the weathered bricks, denser and tangled across the bottom and sparser towards the top. Without pausing, Stress reached for her darker greens, her pinks and purples, more white, more black. It was only when the pink of dawn graced the pocket of sky above her that her trance ended and she stepped back to admire her work.

She had only intended to paint one wall. Now, the whole courtyard was covered in sprawling vines and brilliant purple flowers. The stems all traced back to a skeleton lying along the bottom of the left wall- as monochrome and lifeless as the city. But life grew out of every crevice of the corpse, covering all four walls in vibrant color. It was… beautiful.

Without warning, tears built up in Stress’s eyes and flowed down her face. She barely stifled a sob. She _missed_ the woods. Every streetlight burned her eyes, every concrete wall and metal handrail scraped her skin and rotted her soul. The noise, the smell of the city was oppressive. She wanted to go _home_.

Stress counted the years, months, days until she turned eighteen. She continued searching out lichen and weeds and moss growing in the concrete hellscape. She painted more murals, until the city was coated with color and life. Literal life- real vines and flowers and trees seemed to have better luck growing where she had painted them.

When Stress looked at her wrists, she didn’t see veins, she saw roots pumping water under her skin. Her eyes glittered with an unnatural green and brown light. Besides Scar and Cleo, people stayed away from her. Stress didn’t care. She wouldn’t be in the city much longer. She’d return to where her real home was soon enough.


End file.
